


Ramble On

by javabi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Post-Season/Series 08, Road Trips, Sam is married, basically ignores season 9 lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 09:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1739048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/javabi/pseuds/javabi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"Got no time to for spreadin' roots, the time has come to be gone.<br/>And to our health we drank a thousand times, it's time to ramble on" </em>-Led Zeppelin</p><p>While settling down might be good for some couples (Sam seems to have adjusted well enough to the idea), Dean and Cas find that it isn't their forte. They spend their years after closing the gates of Hell wandering the country in an RV together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ramble On

After it was all over, after the gates of Hell were closed and the angels were safely returned to Heaven, Dean and Castiel just wandered.

They left Sam’s new place in early spring, that picture-perfect little ranch house complete with its two-car garage and 1500 square feet of watery glory. There was even a freaking white picket fence, for God’s sake. The guy deserved it, though, after all he’d been through. Dean smiled when they drove away, still thinking about his new niece. Poor Mrs. Winchester – little Madison, as it turned out, had inherited her father’s gigantor genes and in fact wasn’t very little after all. Dean hoped (for Adrienne’s sake)that the next bundle of poop and snot was normal-sized.

They left the Impala parked in Sam’s driveway. Cas said (quite huffily, in Dean’s opinion) that if he had to be human he wanted to travel in comfort, and that he was tired of shitty hotel rooms. Dean refused to sleep anywhere he considered “fancy” for more than two nights because it made him feel like he was pretending to be someone else. Castiel had pointed out the irony of this, of course, but Dean simply replied “That part of my life is over” and that was the end of it. The two of them compromised and rented an RV.

At first they went places they’d never gotten the chance to see as hunters. Dean got to visit the Grand Canyon, Castiel got a good look at some old cemetery in Massachusetts. They dipped their bare feet in both oceans and took a selfie in front of the Alamo. They held hands while watching the sun set on Lake Superior, then almost strangled one another while climbing Mt. Katahdin because Dean accidentally got them lost. At the end of the summer they returned to Sam’s, intending to finally settle down.

That didn’t quite work out.

“Dean, I’m bored.”

“All right, man. You wanna watch a movie or something?”

“No, I mean I’m bored in general.”

“Is it a sex thing? Because I told you we can use the bunker’s dungeon if—“

“ _No_ ,” Castiel sighed in frustration. “I’m bored with the bunker, and I’m tired of working at the library.”

“Okay, so we’ll get another place to live and you can get a new job, what’s the big deal?”

“Dean,” Cas grunted, clearly irritated. He was sitting at the kitchen table with his chin in his hands, staring up at Dean reproachfully. Dean continued cooking dinner at the stovetop, fighting back a smile at how childish the ex-angel looked. “I want to live in the RV again.”

Dean turned around at that.

“You do?!”

“Yes. It was interesting.”

Exasperation clawed at Dean’s brain, trying desperately to manifest on his face. He wouldn’t let it, though. Not for something that Castiel obviously cared about so much. “Dude, just because it was interesting doesn’t mean it’s plausible, ok? It was fun while it lasted, but we said we were gonna settle down.”

“I changed my mind.”

Spooning rice onto a pair of plates, Dean rolled his eyes at the wall. “We need _jobs_ , Cas. The credit card fraud was ok while we were hunting because that was our only option, but now that we’re – _retired_ or whatever there’s no excuse.” He flipped stir fry on top of the rice and grinned appreciatively at the smell. Being retired might be boring, but at least they got good food.

“I know that. But don’t tell me you’re not getting restless either, I can tell that you are.”

“Yeah, I’m still not used to the nine-to-five grind. That doesn’t mean I won’t get there eventually.” Being a mechanic was pretty awesome, all things considered. It wasn’t as dangerous as hunting, and the steady income it provided meant that he could buy fun shit for him and Cas every once in a while. Sure he wasn’t saving the world anymore, but right now the world didn’t need saving. Which was also pretty awesome.

“Do you _want_ to get there eventually?”

“I—“ Okay that was a good point. Score one to Castiel. Dean sighed as he put both plates on the table. “Not really.”

Sure enough, the asshole’s face lit up at Dean’s reply. “Ha!”

“Relax, you dick,” Dean grumbled as he went to the fridge for a water bottle. “I mean— I know what you’re saying. I know that feeling. It’s like— like there can’t be any other way of life, I guess. You’re either on the move or you’re… stuck.”

Castiel nodded in agreement, picking up his fork and digging into his stir fry enthusiastically. “I’ve never had a real home, not one that was just a single place, anyway. Heaven doesn’t really count. This bunker is the closest thing to it I’ve ever experienced, and we’ve only been here for a few months.”

“Still doesn’t solve the money situation, though.”

Castiel took a sip from his glass of milk before saying seriously, “You can hustle pool and I’ll become a prostitute.”

Dean literally choked on a water chestnut.

“ _What_ —?!“

“I was joking, Dean.”

Glaring at the man across the table, Dean spat, “Not funny. Do you have any _real_ ideas for solving the money problem, genius?”

“I do, actually. You can do odd jobs as a mechanic in whatever towns we end up in. I’ll ask Sam to forge some paperwork for me so that I can be a physics teacher, and I’ll work at schools wherever we go. Then we can both take the whole summer off to travel properly.”

Dean couldn’t help but be impressed. “You really thought this out, didn’t you?”

His mouth was full of stir fry, so Castiel just nodded.

“Well, it’s actually a good idea. Let’s do it.”

The very next day, the two of them went out and bought an RV trailer that could be hooked up to the back of the Impala. After bidding (another) farewell to Sam and his growing family, Dean and Castiel hit the road once more, this time with a much less scheduled agenda.

They went from coast to coast, parking the RV in Wal-Mart parking lots or campgrounds or even just the middle of nowhere. Sometimes they settled for a few months at a time (Castiel liked those months the best, since it allowed him time to actually be a physics teacher instead of helping Dean hustle pool) and sometimes it was just for a few days. There was only one rule: they never stayed in the same town twice, if they could help it.

Occasionally, Dean would start feeling sappy and decide that they should treat themselves. So he’d buy a room at a nice hotel, and they’d stay there for the night instead of the RV. Not that their RV was bad by any means – but sometimes it was nice to get a break. Likewise, every once in a while Castiel would start craving a more solid arrangement and they’d head back to the bunker for a few weeks. But they never stayed too long.

They got into barfights and sent gas station Christmas cards and even made out in a lighthouse once. They saved some stray dogs, learned never to drive in Boston, and saw the Grand Canyon a few more times, just for the hell of it. Dean bought a guitar, to Castiel’s utter delight, and a homeless man taught him how to play it in exchange for a few dozen Subway gift cards and a new set of clothes. They made it back to Kansas to be there when Sam’s son, Bobby, was born. Cas broke his ankle running from a rabid stray cat once, and Dean would probably have laughed if it hadn’t been so terrifying. They argued about what could be considered “literature” and made sure to scrounge up some fireworks for every 4th of July. Life was good.

Whenever she saw the two of them, Charlie would always ask when they would finally be settling down for real. In reply, Castiel would usually just shrug and say something about how happy the road made them. Dean was the one with the perfect answer; he would always look Charlie square in the eye and proudly quote _The Lord of the Rings_ :

“Not all those who wander are lost.”

 

-fin-

**Author's Note:**

> So there’s a bit of a time gap here between when Dean & Cas settled down and when Sam did (since Sam already has a wife and kids in this fic) - for this story, you can assume that Sam succeeded in getting out of the hunter’s life before Dean and Cas :) 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!


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